Each magazine offers different rates for submissions
- usually £500 or so for a short story would be the top end other magazines don’t pay at all (they might offer recognition and a subscription to their magazine. Up to you if you think it’s worth it).
Some magazines pay you per a certain number of words ,
- for example Fictional Desk Magazine pays £15 per 1,000 words (as well as an additional bonus for the best story in each magazine). While this might not sound like a huge amount, if you’re getting paid anything to write fiction then you’re doing something right.
The popular Writers’ Forum offers up to £300 for stories published in their monthly short story contests.
- The stories are a maximum of 3,000 words, so you’d be getting about £100 per 1,000 words which isn’t bad!
Competitions tend to offer greater amounts.
- For example Writer’ Village offers £1,000 top prize in their bi-annual short story content. Second and third place get £150 and £50 respectively. On top of that, all entrants receive feedback and advice on how they can improve their writing which is something others would charge a lot of cash for.
One of the good things about submitting to magazines is that you very rarely have to give up the copyright so you’re usually free to resell any published stories to magazines in other countries. Imagine how good it would feel making money from the same story multiple times!
Is writing short stories something you’d be interested in? Have you ever made money from fiction? Let us know in the comments section below.
